Despite praising free speech, Musk fires Twitter engineers who criticize him

This right here. It isn't like these people were just shitting on Musk or Twitter randomly. They were literally responding to his very public post shitting on them, and in a constructive way that Musk was too sensitive to handle anyone disputing his version of facts. Just look at his lawsuit filings. He doesn't care if the facts are against him, he wants you to believe in his narcissism.

Absolutely. Musk drew first blood by making a public accusation of his own employees and then got all torqued after getting a public response. Notice that he didn't really continue the conversation and his last argument was "you are fired".

It's like he is living the real-world Apprentice, even though Trump never really fired anyone on the show himself - it was the producers who made that call for maximum drama.